KROGOVI (Сircles): Serbian, 2013 Director Srdan Golubović A Serbian film with Slovenian, Croatian and German production inputs.
After a fast start in Trebinje, Montenegro, 1993, introducing the principal characters of the drama, the time moves forward twelve years to Halle, Germany, and then to Belgrade, Serbia, and the pace slows down considerably with lots of real time sequences and lingering shots on pensive faces as the movie lapses into a study of the consequences of an act of collective brutality -- simply put, an outrageous war crime, during the brutal Jugoslavian civil war, a dozen years later. On various people who have tried to put it behind them. At the opening, Marko, a Serbian soldier off duty intervenes in the brutal beating of an innocent Moslem civilian being savaged by some of his soldier mates as the townspeople look on passively.This humane act will have very complex and puzzling repercussions which will not be resolved until the very end when we finally see what happened to Marko as a result of his attempt to save an innocent person from a pointless murder by his mates. This very tense drama that was roundly applauded by the Hungarian (Miskolc) audience and followed by a lengthy Q and A session with the director on stage after the screening. The civil war that tore Jugoslavia apart at the beginning of the nineties is now 20 years behind us but in the region itself the repercussions are still much like an open wound
Circles, aka Krugovi, is based on the true story of a Serbian soldier who was killed defending a Muslim civilian from other soldiers while he was off-duty. Most of the story takes place a decade after the end of Serbian-Bosnian conflict but the effects of the war keep reaching out like ripples on a pond when a heavy stone is thrown in. Expanding concentric circles of guilt that keep disturbing the otherwise smooth surface of the water -- the 'krugovi' of the title -- that affect among others a Serbian family that has started a new life in neutral Germany, but the past comes back to haunt them. A surgeon who was only a medical student at the beginning is faced with the dilemma of whether to operate and save the life of a new patient, or not to operate and let him die when he recognizes the patient as the killer of his best friend back in Trebinje years before. But the former killer taunts him by reminding him that he was of the bystanders who did nothing to prevent the killing on that fatal day. All of this is cunningly directed like an intertwined nest of mystery stories embedded in each other until the surprise revelation at the end. While the story is specifically Yugoslavian the morality involved is universal and the filming is so masterful that this movie will hold the attention of audiences anywhere. Can't wait to see more work by Srdan Golubović.
After a fast start in Trebinje, Montenegro, 1993, introducing the principal characters of the drama, the time moves forward twelve years to Halle, Germany, and then to Belgrade, Serbia, and the pace slows down considerably with lots of real time sequences and lingering shots on pensive faces as the movie lapses into a study of the consequences of an act of collective brutality -- simply put, an outrageous war crime, during the brutal Jugoslavian civil war, a dozen years later. On various people who have tried to put it behind them. At the opening, Marko, a Serbian soldier off duty intervenes in the brutal beating of an innocent Moslem civilian being savaged by some of his soldier mates as the townspeople look on passively.This humane act will have very complex and puzzling repercussions which will not be resolved until the very end when we finally see what happened to Marko as a result of his attempt to save an innocent person from a pointless murder by his mates. This very tense drama that was roundly applauded by the Hungarian (Miskolc) audience and followed by a lengthy Q and A session with the director on stage after the screening. The civil war that tore Jugoslavia apart at the beginning of the nineties is now 20 years behind us but in the region itself the repercussions are still much like an open wound
Circles, aka Krugovi, is based on the true story of a Serbian soldier who was killed defending a Muslim civilian from other soldiers while he was off-duty. Most of the story takes place a decade after the end of Serbian-Bosnian conflict but the effects of the war keep reaching out like ripples on a pond when a heavy stone is thrown in. Expanding concentric circles of guilt that keep disturbing the otherwise smooth surface of the water -- the 'krugovi' of the title -- that affect among others a Serbian family that has started a new life in neutral Germany, but the past comes back to haunt them. A surgeon who was only a medical student at the beginning is faced with the dilemma of whether to operate and save the life of a new patient, or not to operate and let him die when he recognizes the patient as the killer of his best friend back in Trebinje years before. But the former killer taunts him by reminding him that he was of the bystanders who did nothing to prevent the killing on that fatal day. All of this is cunningly directed like an intertwined nest of mystery stories embedded in each other until the surprise revelation at the end. While the story is specifically Yugoslavian the morality involved is universal and the filming is so masterful that this movie will hold the attention of audiences anywhere. Can't wait to see more work by Srdan Golubović.